if you remove a handful of outliers (jesus, buddha, mohammed, joseph smith, maybe two dozen in total) then nobody has ever formed a religion that got any signif

if you remove a handful of outliers (jesus, buddha, mohammed, joseph smith, maybe two dozen in total) then nobody has ever formed a religion that got any significant number of followers. In other words, if you remove the outliers you're now looking at something basically meaningless, like evaluating a McDonald's meal by drinking the soft drink only - everyohe else other than the outliers is the soft drink, and the outliers are the main meal.